Chapter Twenty-Four

Lion didn’t take long to reach the warehouse, and when he arrived it was with a fuck load of gear.

He caught me struggling to attach the legs onto a flatpack style electronics bench, and spent the next twenty minutes redoing what I’d done, cursing me for a fool, and ordering a new second bench for himself.

Once the bench was up, and his was on its way, we spread the actual kit out, and looked it over.

“Okay, first job is mapping the whole thing,” he said. “We need to be damn sure how it came together, before we take it apart.”

We imaged it from every angle, scanned it, and hooked it up to a tablet, downloading everything in the memory, before finally, starting to disassemble.

Most of the wiring was damaged, significant sections were coated in some kind of grease that I chose not to consider, while other areas…

“Why the hell was this coiled up?” Lion asked at one point, and I couldn’t take it any longer, and I told him. “A potty,” he said after a few seconds. “On a goblin’s HEAD?”

“Yup.”

“You let me taste that grease?” he said slowly.

“You said you needed to know what it was, and all you were getting from the scanner was ‘organic’,” I pointed out, entirely reasonably.

“I hate you.”

“I get that a lot.”

“He really does!” Reign called from above, stepping out on the metal landing. “You boys need feeding?”

“Always!” I called back.

“Pizza?” she suggested, and Lion nodded quickly. “I’ll get a selection,” she promised, before strolling from sight as we got back to work.

As we went, we ordered replacement parts. Some were easy, literally a box of some of the bits we needed was a credit. That was it. Others? The magnetic coils and separation system that we could order as part of a plumbing setup to remove contaminants was both better made, and cheaper to get than the original parts.

Some sections though had to be entirely rebuilt, painstakingly replicated according to the design some mad banshee had come up with.

Hours flashed past, as Lion and I examined, scanned, ordered and downloaded, then assembled on the second bench.

We ate, used the facilities, and Lion took delivery of the arm. Then started cutting and assembling sections into it, as I reassembled the stripper.

We power tested and cycled, drained and flushed both systems over and over.

The sun set, and still we worked, stopping only when Luna and Gessh virtually dragged us free of the tables.

“What?” I growled at them.

“We told you twice,” Gessh snapped. “It’s time to go!”

“What?” I asked, confused, shaking my head. “No, no it’s…” I looked out of one of the windows, then blanched, realizing it was night, again!

“How long…?” I asked, glancing around.

“Five minutes, the driver is on his way,” Reign said, smiling as she realized that I’d not been ignoring them, I’d just been so totally focused that I’d genuinely not realized.

“Fuck, I…” I looked around, before spotting all my gear, neatly arranged on a side table, the magazines loaded, grenades replaced, guns gleaming under a fresh coating of oil…

“Don’t get used to it,” Reign whispered into my ear, before kissing my cheek. “Seriously, I know you were working hard, and yeah, we need to get moving.”

“Toilet.” I groaned, only just realizing just how badly I needed it, as Lion wolfed down cold pizza on the other side of the room.

“I’ll keep working,” he grunted around a mouthful of pizza. “Another hour, no more, and it’ll be done.”

“Do we have that?” I asked, glancing at Reign, who shooed me towards the toilet.

When I returned, and quickly started loading my gear onto my armor, she finally filled me in.

“Luna got Dondo to do her a ‘favor’.” Reign grinned at me. “She’s got him wrapped around her little finger now, and he was happy to pull some strings. Somehow he got access to the ACE records. The site we cleared was marked as old storage and a possible flesh market, nothing more, and that two officers, Darran and Garree would monitor it for any further criminal activity.”

“So no mention of the door.”

“Nope. Also someone has paid for ACE patrols and the wall guards to be away from that area tonight. That’s enough that combined with us knowing that fucker is leaving the city tonight? I think its via that exit.”

“The Banshee…” I started to say, and Reign nodded.

“The time they’re guaranteed to be away from their posts?” she asked. “Two hours.”

I glanced at my watch and did some quick working out, then nodded. “And it’s five hours until we’re due to meet the banshee, I told it ‘this time tomorrow’ when we were down there…”

“Exactly,” Reign said firmly. “We’ve got just enough time, provided we air-car it across the city.”

“It’s costing us a damn fortune…” I started, and Luna spoke up.

“And that’s why I might have ‘hired’ us a driver for the night.”

“Hired?” I asked, as Gessh snorted.

“She promised Dondo he’d be getting laid when we get back, if he drove for us tonight.”

“He’s… wait, look not to be ungrateful…” I said, realizing that Reign had said earlier that the ‘driver was on his way’. “But this fucker works for Oshbob, alright? He’s an orc crime lord . Can we trust that one of his people just happens to be able to find all this shit out easily, and he can fly an aircar?”

“You underestimate the power…” Luna started in a deep voice.

“Of twins.” Gessh finished for her, winking. “Believe me, he’s more than happy to help, he’s not asking any questions, and if he does? You already agreed to sell Oshbob parts, so that’s what we’re doing, alright?”

“Fine.” I grunted, before looking over at Lion. “Can you get that thing working tonight?”

“The new one?” He asked and I nodded. “Possibly, but…”

“But?”

“It’ll need a battery,” he repeated. “An external one, preferably a…”

“Would one from the stealth suits work?” Reign asked, nodding to a pile off to one side. “They were delivered an hour ago, Todds is out testing his now, and we’ve got his old suit, its damaged, but the battery is fine?”

“It’ll work, but not well,” he said. “Mind you, the arm would need to be…”

“Fitted,” I agreed. “Tonight.”

“It’s not ready for fitting, and your driver is here,” he pointed out, and I cursed.

“Could you meet us later?” I suggested. “Then we could…”

“Better not to meet the banshee wearing its stolen tech I think,” Lion said. “Believe me, field attachments are not a good idea. After all of this, come to the chop-shop tomorrow. We’ll fit it, and do a test run, but for now?”

The door went below and the deep voice of Dondo called up.

“Dondo’s servicing has arrived!”

“Promises, promises!” Luna called down, before grinning and grabbing her gear. “Come on then, let’s go kill someone, free some slaves, and deal with a banshee. I need the boring stuff out of the way quick, we’ve got a date tonight!”

“Tomorrow,” I corrected, before grinning as Reign bumped me with her shoulder.

“Later, how about breakfast, that shower, and we break in your new bed?” she whispered.

“Hell yes.” I growled, the need rising in me despite the tiredness that also rose. “Although I’m going to need some stims,” I reluctantly admitted.

“Getting floppy in your old age, eh?” Gessh called from below as we all headed down the stairs.

“No actually!” I replied. “Some fuckers were SO GODDAMN LOUD that nobody else could get any sleep!”

“Oh,” she said, wincing as she looked back at us. “I’d apologize…”

“But we wouldn’t mean it.” Luna laughed. “We’ll get some soundproofing sorted out!”

“Please for the sake of my damn ears, do!” I growled, gloomily sure that Reign and I would be settling down to sleep, the ‘deed’ done, long before those fuckers would be later.

Dondo flew us to the same site as before, the place looking pretty much as wonderful as it had last time, with the drag marks, the discarded bullets and shells and even the feeling of ‘you shouldn’t be here’ still heavy in the air as he landed nearby.

We had taken a fast pass around the site from the air first, just to make sure, and then he’d landed us a block away, just in case.

“You kids have fun, you hear!” he joked, as we piled out, popping the trunk and quickly loading up on guns and our remaining armor.

“Just be ready when we call,” I growled at him, before pulling my helmet on, and triggering the tac-net.

“Yes boss…” he replied, as the doors closed and the backblast shoved me aside, the car rising quickly.

I gritted my teeth, knowing that if the fucker had been able to fly the way he had? He’d meant to almost send me to the floor as well.

I growled, then shook myself free of it. Yes, he was undoubtedly reporting everything to ‘that orc’, and yes, he was keeping me awake by screwing the sisters all night long.

That wasn’t a good enough reason to shoot him in the face yet though, not quite.

Maybe a light maiming?

Blow a finger or three off? Or his dick?

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I shook that thought loose as well, it’d turn out to be armor plated or something.

Besides. He’d passed a message on from Oshbob earlier. The fucker had somehow managed to get ahold of the fusion core I needed, as well as the sensor package. I’d not be transferring the credits until I saw the fucking equipment with my own eyes, but I’d agreed to the price, and he was working on the rest.

By dawn I was grimly sure my nice credit balance would soon be wiped out, but that was the way my life seemed to be these days. A feast and a famine.

Currently I was just under seven hundred and forty thousand credits in my account, another quarter of a million to be split between us all once that fucker Anthos Black was dead, but I could feel the magnetic charge of that goddamn orc sucking on the balance already.

I set off jogging across the plaza we’d landed in, ignoring the snap of the awnings and canvas around the edges, as the wind tugged and tore at them, the broken lighting strips and mold that coated others, giving the area an eerie glow.

It didn’t help that the only other light beyond shitty old glow sticks and light strips that were half filled with stagnant water and mold was the distant flickering neon brilliance of the city.

This close to the wall there were no stars, and the neon that reflected off walls brought such a multitude of flickering madness that anyone with epilepsy lasted seconds before collapsing and frothing.

The only way the locals could get any sleep, was to cover sections, great long constructions of old wood or plastic closing off areas, creating deep shadowed recesses.

Then the people were killed by monster incursions, by flesh market peddlers and slavers, and those very places they created to block out the light, to give them a little relief?

They became the homes of the creatures of the night.

Spiders that bred thick enough to carpet the walls, rats that battled the spiders, cats that tried to feed on the rats, and were preyed upon in turn.

These were the smallest and most genial of the inhabitants of the darkness, and every so often, when some genetic twist arose in their ranks? Something that fed upon the ‘normal’ creatures?

They grew to monstrous sizes indeed. They fed on both their mutated brethren, and the nanites that filled all life now, growing stronger and more terrible.

Eventually places like these became no-go areas indeed. Not just because of the proximity to the wall and the terrors that lived on the other side, constantly battling to enter.

No, it was because they developed increased intelligence.

Spiders that sent their lesser brethren in, through cracks in windows and under floors, to search for you, to make sure that there was fresh meat, when the bigger soldier castes came looking.

At least twice a year a housing area, usually a slum, was absorbed by a rolling wave of mutated death, the news reels all lamented it, railed at the corporations that ‘someone should do something’ and then some celebrity was caught with his dick somewhere it shouldn’t be, and the lost were forgotten as well.

All of that rose in my mind as I saw the scuttle of multi-legged madness foaming across nearby walls, and Luna cried out.

“Swarm!” she bellowed, skidding to a halt and racing in the other direction.

“Wha…” Reign started, before we were both turning, boots skidding on the flagstones and tarmac. We ran, all of us, forget stealth, forget the fuckin mission, if that caught us?

It was all over.

We took the corner, racing out into the light, and then another, dipping into darkness again, then Todds screamed, twisting around and hacking with a blade at something that had caught onto one sleeve.

“Fucking webs!” he cried, cutting through it, as two more shot out of the darkness to splatter against his stealth coating. Clearly they had no issue penetrating it, and I cursed.

“Blades!” I bellowed, spinning and triggering my plasma sword, expecting to cut the webs down that were flashing out towards us, only to see the gleam of it reflected in a thousand, thousand eyes.

“Fuck this shit!” Reign screamed, ripping her grazer off her shoulder and slapping the safety off. The bone deep hum rippled out, and she jerked the weapon left and right ahead of us, walls that had appeared solid black with paint or more, suddenly exposed as coated in spiders.

Hundreds of thousands cascaded off the walls, crashing to the floor as Reign fired over and over, jerking the rifle in great arcs of destruction. Luna, Gessh—her rifle wasn’t capable of the same and instead she ripped the battery free, holding it ready for Reign—Todds and myself fell in, going back to back, with blades out.

The spiders lasted seconds, the inexorable tide of death routed as they collapsed in their millions.

From spiders the size of a pinkie nail, to ones larger than any dog I’d ever seen, they crashed and fell all around us, as we gibbered and slashed.

The worst part, for me, was when she fired straight up, dragging the beam across the braced coverings that blocked out the light overhead.

The rain of bodies, twitching in death, was nightmare inducing.

When the largest finally showed itself, it was almost a relief.

They’d been coming in waves, trying to overwhelm us, then fleeing as the grazer swept across them. All the time, we danced and stomped, trying to keep them from climbing our boots, from dropping onto us, and we cried out as here and there a bite marked one that made it through.

Medikits were triggered and used, and more than once we screamed in utter fucking horror.

The queen, when she scuttled out into the open was as anticlimactic as it could be. The terror of millions of tiny spiders, all controlled, all guided and all fucking aiming for us, was too much.

When she appeared, and we all fired on her?

Well.

She practically detonated.

Cooked, by the grazer, riddled by holes, then stabbed, hacked and kicked to fuck?

It was over in seconds, as was the swarm.

Without the power of the queen to keep them all in check, they reverted to spiders, more or less, and broke away from the fight in all directions.

Thirty seconds later, we were running, still shaking, down a narrow alley way, then out into the middle of the next plaza.

Reign was in the lead, her grace and natural agility far surpassing ours, and she skidded to a halt, or tried to, as she ran full length into the group that was rushing past.

Luna, Gessh and I were right behind her, with Todds at the back, and while he triggered his stealth, vanishing, we screamed in reflex, and started fucking cutting.

It was only due to the spiders that we had the blades out, but in the narrow confines of the fight that we found ourselves in thirty seconds after running from the spiders?

They were the right weapons for the job.

We found ourselves in the middle of a group that had been running in the same direction we were, headed for the cleared area with its ruined temple at the end of the waste ground.

Here and there were dotted armed men along with several times their number in bound, gagged and obedience-collared people. Those that were armed though, were generally armed with low caliber pistols, basic rifles and electric whips or tridents.

We were armed with swords. Mono-molecular edged ones, and a plasma blade.

They tried to parry and block, and they were left with half a weapon, or frequently, half a head. The slaves and prisoners saw their chance and even screaming with the agony of rebelling, they grabbed and pinned their captors, making the fight easy for us.

Anthos Black, a huge man, clearly the leader of the group, raced back from the front, seeing what was going on, and barked at his men to stand firm, even as they collapsed under our blades.

He staggered, the hood that covered his head, shadowing the face suddenly torn free as a shot by Reign from her sniper rifle creased one of his cheeks, and removed an ear in the spray of blood.

He raised a hand, bellowing in pain and tried to say something else, before a scream was literally torn from him, as Todds appeared from stealth right behind him.

A dagger punched deep into Anthos’ back, right where the body armor he wore ceased protecting his back, and the waist covering failed to cover.

He screamed as he lost a kidney, the blade ripping backwards and taking a section of organ, and a spray of blood with it. Then Gessh was there, leaping over a falling body and stabbing out, one smooth, graceful thrust that sank deep into the muscle of his right arm, severing it.

He screamed, then fell, his left knee exploding as Reign took it from him, the boom of the high powered sniper rifle echoing off the walls.

As he hit the floor, I skidded to a halt, spinning quickly, checking on all sides, and confirming that of all the slavers, only three, counting him still lived.

One was being beaten into the floor, a tiny red-headed woman slamming it into asphalt with such ferocity I could hear the cracks as the skull gave way.

Another was running, and he was moving like his arse was on fire. “Reign!” I called, and she spun, seeing the direction I was pointing, and raised her rifle in one smooth motion.

It barely seemed to pause before it barked, and he screamed, tumbling to the floor in a spray of blood.

“Luna!” I barked, gesturing roughly around me. “Free them!”

“Aye, boss!” she sang, clearly very happy to have something to vent her anger on after the spiders, as she dragged her blade free of a slumped body.

“Gessh, restrain him… remove anything you feel necessary.”

“You…” The big man glared at me, his short blond and red beard shining with blood from the ear as he tried to shake his head. “You don’t know what you’ve done... who I am…!” He ended with a growl.

“Anthos Black,” I said, taking an image of him and sending it to Stinger.

“Aye… but…” He closed his eyes and steadied his voice, trying again. “You don’t know who I work for,” he managed to get out this time.

“No,” I agreed, as Stinger called me, and I gave them a remote link to my optics, albeit a very limited and tightly controlled one. “I don’t know who you work for, and I don’t care. The people we work for gave us your name, that’s all, and after seeing what a scumbag you are?”

I shrugged, then forced a smile. “I could finish you off quite happily, but…” I turned to face the crowd of now ex slaves, all being freed by Luna. “I think they have first call on you,” I finished, before turning to the crowd.

“Feel free to kill him, but try not to mess the mods up too badly please, I need to sell them.”

Anthos screamed as Todds appeared again, this time slashing the blade across the fingers of the hand that rose towards the grenades on Anthos’ chest, cutting them, and then the body armor and weapons free.

“Are we good?” I asked Stinger, watching as the mass fell on the slaver, kicking, stomping, punching and gouging.

“We are. I recommend you ask them to leave the head more or less recognizable however, there is a substantial bounty on him, raised this morning.”

“Really?” I asked, smiling.

“Yes, our payment stands, but the original price on his head went up by thirty thousand this morning.”

“Very nice,” I purred, moving in closer, taking a quick shot of his face and then submitting it for the bounty, tagging all five of us in the kill claim.

“We accept that Anthos Black is dead, and the contract is formally closed.” Stinger said, smiling. “As such, our services are now available to you, for advice, for training, and of course, to act as your fixer, should you need a steady source of income.”

“Thank you.” I sighed in relief. “Right, these people…”

“Are most likely nobodies, but some may have missing person’s bounties on their heads. I recommend scanning them all, then alerting the relevant charities to their presence.”

“Will do.” I stretched, cracking my back and wincing as I saw a nearby spider crawling across a wall. I ended the call, then started gathering everyone up, getting Reign to go person by person, scanning their face and ident, as she checked them over, making sure they were okay.

As soon as we were all a decent distance from the narrow alley that the spiders had chased us into, I started checking the bodies with Gessh and Luna, all three of us stripping them, while Todds got to play hero, speaking to the charities and arranging emergency collection.

It was insane that in a city as sick and twisted as Artem, there were still some people that ran charities rescuing and rehoming, but hey, I was just glad I didn’t have to fuck with it all.

Twenty minutes after that, we were in our aircar again, ignoring whatever Luna and Dondo were doing in the front—the car dipped and nearly hit a tower at one point, just as Luna swore she was ‘examining his belt’.

Soon after that, we landed at our warehouse, retrieving the old kit and waking Lion, who’d fallen asleep, then taking him with us as well as the arm.

We dropped him off at his shop—he apparently lived above it, somewhere in the old buildings—and I was dropped off with the gear for the banshee, as Dondo took off and landed a few hundred meters back, giving us room.

The cleanup was still ongoing apparently, floodlights lit the cooling tower, and dozens of goblins were clearly visible, laying out parts here and here, ready for cataloging and ‘disposal’. Presumably via Oshbob.

I looked around, spotting the only area where the lights had failed off to one side, and an underpass next to that. An underpass that had not a single light nearby working.

I walked over to it, stopping at the edge of the light and waiting.

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